musiclover

my first job was at age 14, when i worked part-time (after school/evenings/weekends) at a full-service gasoline station attendent. That meant that I had to run out and open the gas tanks of people's cars (usually the fat cats from Boston or local fatcats on their way to the near-by ski areas or other scenic travel destinations :dozey: ) and fill gas in them while they say cosy in their seats. I was also expected to open the hood (what you Brits might still be calling 'bonnet' :D ) of the car and check engine oil level, check transmission, wiper fluid, etc. If anything needed replinishing, ask the customer if they want it filled-up too. Oh, and then the worst part...check all the tire air pressures. That was horrible when it was bitter cold outside and snowing. :cry: I also handeled the cash register and once when one of the town's ladies forgot to pay and drove off, i called police on her, only to find out that she is the village doctor's wife and she wasn't a thief but just embarrasingly forgot to pay for the tank of gas! :stunned: :embarrased: . Ohh and this one time, while locking up the place at night, I wasn't fast enough to lock the door and get outta there, and I accidentally triggered the burglar alarm! :lol: :embarrased: . But the owner was an old friend of my uncle's and he didn't fire me. :D :P but the tips, i thought at that time, were generous. i would buy candies from the vending machine if i got some "extra cash" :D ahh...that was a nice job! :cool:

:idea2:

yay!! :) welcome to the kingdom of vegetarians, Carla! :cool: you can write me anytime if you need help/have questions... :) i'll pm you.

"hungary" for some soya protein, steppenwold?! :wink3: :P

then this thread is not for you! :angry: :rolleyes: :P :D

:huh: :huh:

The queen is back :P and 13? :o fook she looks about 18 :stunned: I never heard of her so you cant blame me ps. geez, im not musiclover :P Oh yeah, coming from the one who tried to seduce eric (16) , jako(14) and jeffo(13 last year) uh huh :stunned: mwhahaha :mellow: :kiss: :o :angry:

yeah, Sternly...well, doesn't take a lot to bring out the machoness--or the defense of it---from the latino/hispanic guys...i see a lot of it here in texas too! lol don't worry, i know i'm not virile! lmao by the way, i liked the quotes you have in your signature. if i remember correctly, the first one was said by Mahatma Gandhi.

that's awesome! :) i'm looking around for nice girls to date, and most are just surprised that i'm a vegetarian. it's rough. i don't want to go to a sushi bar or to a steakhouse everyday! :rolleyes: specially if i'm going to pay for the meals! :P :D

:huh:

^ expert communicator.

:angry: :/

leave to Mr. Peed to do a good job or analysis! As usual! :cool:

wow! I'm so proud of all you people who're vegetarians/vegans or thinking about being that way, after having grown up eating and being fed meat all the time, and being in a meat-eating culture. I was brought up in a vegetarian household so I always got enough variety of veggie foods for me to wonder about not having variety. Have you ever eaten an Indian meal...it's FULL of variety, and all sorts of flavors!! :) :) Now I know some of you people don't like curries so I guess that's that... to each their own isn't it. But I've actually tasted meat. I used to eat chicken but after a while, I gave it up for moral reasons...plus I don't need it to make me happy or feel satisfied. :smug: And the one time I tried out red meat (some pig part sandwich), I had to violently throw up and my body just got rid of it. So no red meat since then...you can't say I didn't try! Lastly, yeah, I love those black-bean burgers or soya-protein burger patties. They're making all sorts of vegetarian alternatives to meat products. It's fun to try some of them out. Though I tried the "meat" lasagna that was made of soya and if it was supposed to taste and have texture/feel of ground beef, it did the trick because i hated it and almost threw up again...! but black-bean burgers are good! :cool:

yeah, i was talking about him indeed! lol he can be a jerk sometimes and he and I used to get into a few small-time talks about various things but on the whole, i think he was a cool guy. actually, i had posted this article in the lounge, but i guess someone moved it over to here. yeah, it's quite long...and if you don't like CP getting criticized, it can be too long and cruel! lol

yes, that is usually the reason why most people get turned off by meat. My ex girlfriend stopped eating meat in college, after she had to work as a short-order cook and had to actually see the blood ooze out of the meat she would cook. She's still a vegetarian and loving it... :smug: as for family pressure...well, if you really want to be a rebel, you can learn to cook simple vegetarian items for yourself. There are many resources online or at your local library that could be useful in that effort. I'm in Texas...the heart of meat-eating country, and we still have a group of vegetarians that meets here for help and resources. You can find out if there is a local vegetarian group in your area...it helps to be in company of people who think the way you do about food. :)

mrcool, do i know you? are you Eric? you sure sound like him...! haha anyways, glad that people are noticing this article. I didn't know what to think of it. In a way, if you look at it, yeah, a lot of Coldplay lyrics are similar and they all sound the same after a while. perhaps he should also go slow on the high pitch of his voice sometimes! lol

out of the (jack in the) box thinking! :wink3: :D

yeah, well, you should be thankful to all the vegetarians...we're not eating meat so you can have it all, for cheap, i might add! :lol: :P

The Case Against Coldplay (the pictures in the article are amazing, if you have access to the New York Times web site, that is, like I do! :) ) By JON PARELES Published: June 5, 2005 THERE'S nothing wrong with self-pity. As a spur to songwriting, it's right up there with lust, anger and greed, and probably better than the remaining deadly sins. There's nothing wrong, either, with striving for musical grandeur, using every bit of skill and studio illusion to create a sound large enough to get lost in. Male sensitivity, a quality that's under siege in a pop culture full of unrepentant bullying and machismo, shouldn't be dismissed out of hand, no matter how risible it can be in practice. And building a sound on the lessons of past bands is virtually unavoidable. But put them all together and they add up to Coldplay, the most insufferable band of the decade. This week Coldplay releases its painstakingly recorded third album, "X&Y" (Capitol), a virtually surefire blockbuster that has corporate fortunes riding on it. (The stock price plunged for EMI Group, Capitol's parent company, when Coldplay announced that the album's release date would be moved from February to June, as it continued to rework the songs.) "X&Y" is the work of a band that's acutely conscious of the worldwide popularity it cemented with its 2002 album, "A Rush of Blood to the Head," which has sold three million copies in the United States alone. Along with its 2000 debut album, "Parachutes," Coldplay claims sales of 20 million albums worldwide. "X&Y" makes no secret of grand ambition. Clearly, Coldplay is beloved: by moony high school girls and their solace-seeking parents, by hip-hop producers who sample its rich instrumental sounds and by emo rockers who admire Chris Martin's heart-on-sleeve lyrics. The band emanates good intentions, from Mr. Martin's political statements to lyrics insisting on its own benevolence. Coldplay is admired by everyone - everyone except me. It's not for lack of skill. The band proffers melodies as imposing as Romanesque architecture, solid and symmetrical. Mr. Martin on keyboards, Jonny Buckland on guitar, Guy Berryman on bass and Will Champion on drums have mastered all the mechanics of pop songwriting, from the instrumental hook that announces nearly every song they've recorded to the reassurance of a chorus to the revitalizing contrast of a bridge. Their arrangements ascend and surge, measuring out the song's yearning and tension, cresting and easing back and then moving toward a chiming resolution. Coldplay is meticulously unified, and its songs have been rigorously cleared of anything that distracts from the musical drama. Unfortunately, all that sonic splendor orchestrates Mr. Martin's voice and lyrics. He places his melodies near the top of his range to sound more fragile, so the tunes straddle the break between his radiant tenor voice and his falsetto. As he hops between them - in what may be Coldplay's most annoying tic - he makes a sound somewhere between a yodel and a hiccup. And the lyrics can make me wish I didn't understand English. Coldplay's countless fans seem to take comfort when Mr. Martin sings lines like, "Is there anybody out there who / Is lost and hurt and lonely too," while a strummed acoustic guitar telegraphs his aching sincerity. Me, I hear a passive-aggressive blowhard, immoderately proud as he flaunts humility. "I feel low," he announces in the chorus of "Low," belied by the peak of a crescendo that couldn't be more triumphant about it. In its early days, Coldplay could easily be summed up as Radiohead minus Radiohead's beat, dissonance or arty subterfuge. Both bands looked to the overarching melodies of 1970's British rock and to the guitar dynamics of U2, and Mr. Martin had clearly heard both Bono's delivery and the way Radiohead's Thom Yorke stretched his voice to the creaking point. Unlike Radiohead, though, Coldplay had no interest in being oblique or barbed. From the beginning, Coldplay's songs topped majesty with moping: "We're sinking like stones," Mr. Martin proclaimed. Hardly alone among British rock bands as the 1990's ended, Coldplay could have been singing not only about private sorrows but also about the final sunset on the British empire: the old opulence meeting newly shrunken horizons. Coldplay's songs wallowed happily in their unhappiness. "Am I a part of the cure / Or am I part of the disease," Mr. Martin pondered in "Clocks" on "A Rush of Blood to the Head." Actually, he's contagious. Particularly in its native England, Coldplay has spawned a generation of one-word bands - Athlete, Embrace, Keane, Starsailor, Travis and Aqualung among them - that are more than eager to follow through on Coldplay's tremulous, ringing anthems of insecurity. The emulation is spreading overseas to bands like the Perishers from Sweden and the American band Blue Merle, which tries to be Coldplay unplugged. :lol: :lol: A band shouldn't necessarily be blamed for its imitators - ask the Cure or the Grateful Dead. But Coldplay follow-throughs are redundant; from the beginning, Coldplay has verged on self-parody. When he moans his verses, Mr. Martin can sound so sorry for himself that there's hardly room to sympathize for him, and when he's not mixing metaphors, he fearlessly slings clichés. "Are you lost or incomplete," Mr. Martin sings in "Talk," which won't be cited in any rhyming dictionaries. "Do you feel like a puzzle / you can't find your missing piece." Coldplay reached its musical zenith with the widely sampled piano arpeggios that open "Clocks": a passage that rings gladly and, as it descends the scale and switches from major to minor chords, turns incipiently mournful. Of course, it's followed by plaints: "Tides that I tried to swim against / Brought me down upon my knees." On "X&Y," Coldplay strives to carry the beauty of "Clocks" across an entire album - not least in its first single, "Speed of Sound," which isn't the only song on the album to borrow the "Clocks" drumbeat. The album is faultless to a fault, with instrumental tracks purged of any glimmer of human frailty. There is not an unconsidered or misplaced note on "X&Y," and every song (except the obligatory acoustic "hidden track" at the end, which is still by no means casual) takes place on a monumental soundstage. As Coldplay's recording budgets have grown, so have its reverberation times. On "X&Y," it plays as if it can already hear the songs echoing across the world. "Square One," which opens the album, actually begins with guitar notes hinting at the cosmic fanfare of "Also Sprach Zarathustra" (and "2001: A Space Odyssey"). Then Mr. Martin, never someone to evade the obvious, sings about "the space in which we're traveling." As a blockbuster band, Coldplay is now looking over its shoulder at titanic predecessors like U2, Pink Floyd and the Beatles, pilfering freely from all of them. It also looks to an older legacy; in many songs, organ chords resonate in the spaces around Mr. Martin's voice, insisting on churchly reverence. As Coldplay's music has grown more colossal, its lyrics have quietly made a shift on "X&Y." On previous albums, Mr. Martin sang mostly in the first person, confessing to private vulnerabilities. This time, he sings a lot about "you": a lover, a brother, a random acquaintance. He has a lot of pronouncements and advice for all of them: "You just want somebody listening to what you say," and "Every step that you take could be your biggest mistake," and "Maybe you'll get what you wanted, maybe you'll stumble upon it" and "You don't have to be alone." It's supposed to be compassionate, empathetic, magnanimous, inspirational. But when the music swells up once more with tremolo guitars and chiming keyboards, and Mr. Martin's voice breaks for the umpteenth time, it sounds like hokum to me. :rolleyes:

check this out... :stunned: :confused: http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/05/arts/music/05pare.html?ex=1118635200&en=da2a8d0caf00dcfd&ei=5070

This article might confuse you more than it helps, because it's written from a totally different context. But I guess it can't be too bad. I really enjoyed it! :) http://villagevoice.com/news/0521,essay,64232,6.html (that is the most-read weekly paper in the U.S.) The Essay Where's the Beef? The author might have forgotten why she's a vegetarian—but don't ask her to quit now by Sloane Crosley May 23rd, 2005 3:55 PM 'I tell other vegetarians that I started eating sushi because I developed an iron deficiency. This is a total lie.' I am not a very good vegetarian anymore. There, I said it. Sure, I still like to veg out. Be still like vegetables. Lay like broccoli. But I used to be an exemplary vegetarian. A few years ago The New Yorker ran a cartoon of one woman explaining to another during a meal: "I started my vegetarianism for health reasons, then it became a moral choice, and now it's just to annoy people." Four people sent me that cartoon, including my parents. Who faxed it to me. At work. I grew to accept that my refusal to eat anything that once had the will to crap was funny for others. As part of my acceptance, I had to laugh at veggie jokes that were never very funny. The upside was I got to have (vegetable) stock answers prepared for queries about my diet. For example: Most of your shoes are made of leather or suede. Why is that? "Because I'm not going to eat my boots, that's why. There's a big difference between stepping on something and making it a part of you. I'm not going to eat sidewalk either." What do you mean "no meat"? No chicken? No lobster? "Just venison." The problem now is I'm not sure I have the right to slyly defend myself in this manner, not anymore. What follows is a roughage exposé, if you will. The first thing to understand is that being a vegetarian is actually a pretty private matter. I am still taken aback by the question "Then what do you eat?" and am embarrassed as I struggle to produce the week's food diary. It's not that I'm ashamed of what I eat, but it's none of anyone's business. I imagine I would have a similar feeling counting up how many pairs of underwear I went through in a week (OK, nine). It's strange to be interested in something so basic that I barely register it as an activity. The only reason opening someone's refrigerator is more socially acceptable than opening someone's medicine cabinet is that people keep beer in their refrigerator. (And what's really socially unacceptable is drinking alone.) In this way—something once between a select few now coming out of the freezer—being a vegetarian in this city is not unlike being gay. Vegetarian restaurants and options abound. I have the same number of veggie friends as I do gay friends. Because it's so common and sometimes even hip to be a vegetarian, it's become socially acceptable to poke fun of us. Being a vegan, of course, is more like the dietary equivalent of being a transsexual. Acceptance isn't quite as contagious as it should be. I tried being a vegan once. Six months of tempeh and kale and I cracked like a rice cake and inhaled an entire box of fluorescent mac and cheese. It was just too hard for me to keep up the charade of a dairy-free existence. The surprising part was how easy veganism was to enter into. You read enough books that make The Jungle look like Goodnight, Moon and you wake up one day to find yourself a recycled-paper-card-carrying member of the tofu mafia. And I knew which books to read, all right. My own private Idaho potato went like this: When I was a teenager a renowned South African acupuncturist moved in next door to my parents. He and his wife (who pronounces lime like lamb, thus leading to the infamous pie recipe debacle) are still the hippest couple my parents know and single-handedly responsible for introducing them to Whole Foods and the Fugees. One day I told the acupuncturist I wanted to be a vegetarian. I wish I could remember why I wanted to stop eating meat, but this was high school and I also wish I could remember my motivation for drinking Zima and wearing flannel in public. I met with a nutritionist in the acupuncturist's office on Fifth Avenue. She took my whim far more seriously than I did. She talked about tahini, how to cook vegetables properly, and the semi-apocalyptic idea that you could soak almonds for days to make "milk." That I never tried. But I did buy a cookbook called The Single Vegan, not because I was single at the time but because this was the only vegan cookbook available. Looking back, I should have taken it as a cosmic hint to be less of a high-maintenance eater—the soy cheese always stands alone. Instead I saw myself as this nutritionist woman saw me: a power vegan. I juiced things. Lots of things. For a while anyway. Damn you, delicious powdered cheese. So that's my story of how I became a veggie—because I couldn't hack it as a vegan. Except the problem now is I can't hack it as a vegetarian either. What can I say? New York is sushi city, and sushi is the one thing I've consistently craved over the past decade (besides the secret craving of every vegetarian: bacon). My education about the moral and environmental impact of eating meat is thorough, but my response to all the statistics has developed a major fissure called "sashimi." At first I started with gateway fish: salmon and tuna. I think it's because when I pictured them, they were in massive schools where, going against the current of every crunchy article I had ever believed in, I reasoned: Would they really miss just one? Probably more convenient with one less car on the road. And wham: Now I'll eat eel. In my lame defense, it's very hard to be a girl and say you won't eat something. Refuse one plate of bacon-wrapped pork rinds and you're an anorexic. Accept them and you're on Atkins. Excuse yourself to go to the bathroom and you're bulimic. Best to keep perfectly still and bring an IV of fluids with you to dinner. I tell other vegetarians that I started eating sushi because I developed an iron deficiency. This is a total lie. But it's a lie that works. Contrary to popular belief, vegetarians aren't holistic Nazis or New Yorker cartoons. They will accept medical betrayal. What they won't accept is that I got lazy, that I decided fish were yummy and didn't have nervous systems complex enough to register pain, that Edward Furlong is a freak for trying to free the lobsters and David Foster Wallace thinks too hard about our acquaintances of the sea. So what's to become of me now? Like anything that begins on the fringe, vegetarianism is dominated by older adherents who will kick you out of the veggie club faster than you can say "grilled vegetable terrine." With raw and organic food available in every zip code, we have it easy compared to them. Back in their day they had to walk five miles, uphill both ways, until their Birkenstocks were bloody, just to get a slice of polenta. They are quick to judge and would rather break bread with a veal eater than a nouveau fad vegetarian. I eat with the fishes so life is easy for me all of a sudden. Thus I have kept my mouth shut about my dirty sushi secret until now. The truth is I'm not particularly sure why I don't eat meat anymore. Any well-educated carnivore could easily thrash me in a debate on the subject—but not dissuade me. Meat (cows, pigs, Bambi) is the final frontier and I can't bring myself to cross it. Alas, I will continue to attend weddings where I have to politely pull the waiter aside and explain my situation. Without fail the exact same plate returns 10 minutes later—a couple of string beans rolling in the juicy outline of a steak. Yes, my proclivity for the chickpea has staying power. And why? Habit. Habit and a penchant for snarky anti-carnivore comebacks. Except now I have to be careful not to make them in the company of hardcore vegetarians. I still consider myself a vegetarian, but after this little confession the tofu mafia will cast me out. It's more acceptable to tailor your own religion (see this first-date classic: "I don't believe in God, but I do believe in something bigger than 'us' ") than it is to tailor your own vegetarianism. My one hope is that if vegetarianism really is some urban faith, this is me throwing my hearts and my palms together and renewing my vows to vegetables. The words are secondary to the sentiment. Praise be to wheatgrass. Artichoke me with okra and baptize me in beet juice. Juices saves. That's what counts, right? It better be . . . or else my fellow vegetarians will eat me alive for it.

Good to see you, Sternly! Well, I'm a vegetarian, and I can say that I'm pretty healthy and I don't seem to have a deficiency of anything, calcium, protein, iron, anything. I am healthy as a horse! If getting a bit chubby from all the sitting around I do at work! :confused: :D You're confusing being vegetarian from being vegan. For vegetarians can have milk and milk products (cheese, yogurt, etc.). I eat greens, legumes, pulses, drink milk, eat cheese, etc. Some vegetarians even eat eggs and egg ommlettes, and some also eat seafood because they think the fishes don't have a well-developed nervous system for them to feel pain. It all really is up to you as to how you want to tailor your diet. Vegans, on the other hand, don't eat any animal products, so they stay away from milk, butter, cheese, etc. But even for them there's soya milk, which has just as much protein if not more. Many meat-eaters, when they switch to being vegetarian (switching to being vegan is very very hard and most don't take that step...i've never been vegan, in fact, only vegetarian!), they start to take multi-vitamin tablets. You can ask your doctor to recommend you some, but those are not a prescription....you can buy them withouth the doctor's note. At least here in the U.S. I know many friends who were about your age when they started to think about stop eating meat. And most are happy with their decision. Some go back to eating only white meat (chicken, turkey, etc.) but no red meat at all. And some, after being vegetarian, go a step further and become vegans. None of their healths are worse. If at all, they're happy with it! So do what makes you comfortable. I know your parents will not like it. But its your decision. And being a vegetarian myself, I highly recommend it! :) Hope this helps.

ah...so this thing got moved to here. but like...39 people looked at it so far and nobody else wrote a reply...weird! how are you, bart? i'm doing okay...slowly getting past it and just living life...

Howdy folks! I don't know if ya'll know of this, but Realplayer is showing like 7 of Coldplay's big hits in video on the player, at least today, for free. i'd not seen the video for Trouble...it's so cool!!! :-) and also, they have Coldplay live at Glastonbury, playing Yellow and The Scientist. The other tracks are from their CD recording, i think. just thought i'd let you all in on this.... enjoy!